Jefferson, in one of his last letters to Adams, dated March 25, 1826, spoke of the time when both came into fame as the heroic age. The phrase was certainly not mere rhetoric. The two men differed enormously, both in their personalities and in their ideas--perhaps quite as much as Jefferson differed from Hamilton or Adams from his cousin Sam--but in one thing at least they were exactly alike: they were men of complete integrity. As Frederick the Great said of the Prussian _Junker_, one could not buy them, and they would not lie. The fact, at times, made them bitter enemies, and the virtues of the one were cancelled by the virtues of the other, to the damage of their common country. But when they stood together, they were irresistible, for complete integrity, when it does not spend itself against itself, is always irresistible--one of the few facts, to me known, that is creditable to the human race. The masses of men, like children, are easily deceived, but in the long run, like children again, they show a tendency to yield to character. Bit by bit it conquers them. They see in it all the high values that they are incapable of reaching themselves. They see the courage that they lack, and the honesty that they lack, and the resolution that they lack. All these things were in both Adams and Jefferson. They fell, in their day, into follies, but I don’t think that anyone believes they were ever _pushed_ into them. Adams, no doubt, could be bamboozled, but neither he nor Jefferson could be scared. I fear that the gallant iconoclasts who revise our history-books sometimes forget all this. Engaged upon the destruction of legends, all of them maudlin and many of them downright insane, they also, at times, do damage to facts. One of these facts, it seems to me, ought not to be forgotten, to wit, that it took a great deal of courage, in the Summer of 1776, to sign Jefferson’s celebrated exercise in colonial Johnsonese. There were ropes dangling in the air, and they were uncomfortably near. There were wives and children to be considered, and very agreeable estates. However dubious their primary motives, the men who signed took a long chance, quietly, simply, and with their faces to the front. How many of their successors in our own time have ever followed their example? I find it hard to think of one. The politician of to-day lacks their courage altogether; he lacks their incorruptible integrity. He is a complete coward. The whip of the Anti-Saloon League is enough to make him leap and tremble; the shadow of the rope would paralyze him with terror. He is for sale to anyone who has anything valuable to offer him, and the day after he has sold out to A he is ready to sell out to A’s enemy, B. His honor is that of a street-walker.